Ascent From Darkness by Michael Leehan

Whoa.  Deep.  Heavy.  Compelling.  Scary.  These are words I thought of as I read this book.  And the retelling of the story is at times so intense with evil that I had to put the book down and pray that God would cover me and my house.


It is the true life story of a man who gave himself to Satan and served him for 20 years.  What I read in this book is unreal.  I've always believed that a Spiritual world exists and we have to be on guard against evil.  But this story added new information to that realm for me.  The author committed ritualistic blood sacrifices, animal killings, and did the bidding of Satan and his demons.  He would sneak into churches and leave satanic bibles for people to find, in the hopes of confusing them.  He suffered incredible oppression, and almost carried out the assignment of Satan to kill a pastor, and then almost killed himself when Satan told him to.  He had many, many close encounters with demons.


After 20 years of serving the devil, Leehan found God in a pretty incredible way.  He totally committed his life to God, renounced Satan's hold on him, and prayed God's protection over him and his family.  He even told Satan that every time he attacked him or his family, he would witness Jesus to at least 5 people that day!


A few things in particular that were interesting to read was his perception as a satanist of Christians.  He noticed again and again how weak-minded Christians seem, and how most are luke warm, sitting on the fence.  He spent a lot of time studying the Bible and memorizing Scripture, so much that he got very good at manipulating verses to unknowledgable Christians and, in his mind, hopefully causing doubt and making them turn away from God.  One in particular he remembered was the verse "Submit yourselves, then, to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you." (Jamie 4:7)  He says "I would throw out the phrase 'Resist the devil and he will flee!'  Sounds right on and harmless, but it is far from the truth.  These people would go on about their business, thinking that if they just resist the devil when they feel oppression, they would be okay.  I didn't tell them the most important portion of that Scripture: 'Submit yourselves, then, to God.'  That is the crux of that verse.  The adversary is going nowhere unless one is in submission to God!"  I like that Leehan chose to give this example of his manipulation in the book because I never thought of the two sentences in this verse going together, that one was useless without the other.  Powerful knowledge to glean.


As I put the book down when I finished, a few other words that came to mind were mercy, change, redemption, peace.  I am so happy to read the end of this story, that Satan was defeated in this situation, and Michael Leehan is now living as an amazing Christian witness.  He has a passion that was used for evil and is now being used for God's glory.  What an amazing testimony to read!

I received a copy of this book from booksneeze.com in exchange for my honest review.

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

I was very excited to buy and read this book, as I've been seeing it everywhere, with people quoting from it on Facebook, and seeing lists of 'One Thousand Gifts' on many blogs.  And after reading it, I don't quite know what to say about the book.  The thoughts in it were insightful, when I could get around the odd, verbose wording to discover the meaning underneath.  Some of the insights did change my heart to how I live, how I can become more grateful, but I found the book extremely difficult to get through because of the author's style of writing.  Reading a phrase or two at a time is easier, but to put oddly worded phrases into paragraphs that fill whole chapters makes it all begin to blur into words that don't seem to come together properly and create an artsy-sounding jumble.  I can't think of a better way to describe it.

Something in particular that stuck out to me in a positive way was when Voskamp quoted her mother: "Expectations kill relationships."  How true.  I would love to live without expectations from people.  In fact, I have begun this process before reading this book, to look to God for comfort, love, acceptance and affirmation, for only He can give it wholly, and he knows exactly the way I need to feel each of those things.  I long to not expect it from people, even those close to me and that love me.  Because they are human and they can never give me all that I need.  I don't want to rely on any human, but rest in the strong arms of God who knows me better than I know myself.

Voskamp includes some very powerful insights into living fully, living full of gratefulness to our God, but despite that and the fact that many others obviously enjoy her style of writing (since it is a New York Times Bestseller), I would't recommend this book. 

Kaleidoscope Eyes by Karen Ball

This book was good, the story was intriguing, somewhat intense, with a great romance plot.  However the style of writing is not my favourite.  Very cheesy at times, little things added in for reasons other than the plot of the book.  But I am very picky when it comes to style of writing.  I think I read into things too much, and sometimes don't just enjoy a book for the entertainment factor, getting too bogged down in some minor stylistic annoyances.

For example, the main family in the story has a short discussion about the death penalty, with members quoting Scripture to back up their reasons for supporting it or not.  Doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the story so I felt that the author just wanted to get people thinking even though it doesn't necessarily fit into the story.

I also found that the basis of the title of the book was an addition that didn't really add to the plot.  The main character has a condition called synesthesia, which is an actual condition where a person sees colour in numbers, letters and people, evoking personalities just by sight.  In the book, this character, Annie, is exceptionally good at her job of search and rescue because of this condition.  Maybe it just wasn't explained well enough, but that didn't make sense for me, and I thought the book would have been great even if she was a normal person who did search and rescue.  Her condition did make her very good at her other job, as a stained glass artist, which does play into the plot as well, but again, she could have been a very good artist without the synesthesia.  It wasn't melded into the plot well enough for me to see it as necessary.

Besides all of that, when the plot thickens just after the middle of the book, I found that I could not put it down and was so invested in the characters and how everything would play out.  I want to give this book a good review because of that.  It is a good read, minus a few dispensable portions.

Has God Spoken? by Hank Hanegraaf

I was very excited to receive this book in the mail from booksneeze.com.  (I received it free in exchange for my honest public review.)  I love to read arguments supporting the Bible or Christianity as a whole.  And I have heard great things about this author, about how very knowledgable he is and that he seeks to lead people to the true God.

In this book, Hanegraaf divides his arguments into an easy acronym, M-A-P-S, which stand for Manuscript Copies, Archaeologist's Spade, Prophetic Stars and Scriptural Lights.  Each category is also broken down into acronyms to make the book more concise and easy to follow.

It is altogether a very interesting read, though some parts (like those on typological vs. predictive fulfillment of prophecies) went way over my head!  There were a few parts that felt a little repetitive, but for the most part the writing was concise and pretty easy to follow.  I absolutely love reading about archaeological finds that prove stories in the Bible or show that people in the Bible are real from a purely historical standpoint.  And I like reading an author debunking some of the major theories used to explain away Jesus' resurrection, the most laughable being the swoon theory, hypnosis of the disciples or hypersuggestibility of the disciples.

This is a good book for those who want to brush up on their apologetics, and have more answers for things like how our Bible today can still be accurate even through centuries of copying and recopying.  It is fascinating to learn some of the practices of early scribes, and why the message we read today is unchanged from when it was written.